19th
This place.
As I walk up to Piedmont Hospital I am struck by its size. It is a large, imposing building made of mostly beautiful red brick and contrasting cinderblocks. There are multiple sections where you can see the building grew over time. The added on structures look slightly out of place and have some trademarks of the time in which and by whom they were built.
I enter the revolving glass doors when a cold blast of air hits me in the face and my hair is blowing. Immediately I am lost. No matter how many times I enter this building, which is beginning to feel like all too often these days, I get confused and lost. I am always rushing when I am here and hardly am able to take notice of most of my surroundings until later when I’ve slowed down.
Once I find my path, I keep my head down as to not make eye contact with those suffering around me. I have grown to count my steps from the ugly geometric carpet to the sparkling white tiled floor. I look up long enough to notice a long window. I stop here and spend an inordinate amount of time overlooking the cloudy Atlanta skyline before unwillingly moving on to my mother’s room.
My ever-present companions have become the mechanical ‘beep’ and elevator music, and the smell of various bouquets mixed with economy strength antiseptic. I lie in a fold out chair that has become my bed and contemplate these contrasting sounds and smells. I determine it is an all too obvious attempt at masking the reality of a grave situation. I feel as if I should be thankful for it. I am not. A scratchy blanket that barely reaches my ankles is all that protects me from the arctic air conditioning, which I have been perched precariously close to for what seems like days. I know, though, that it has only been a couple hours today. The consistent ‘beeps’ that assure me of continued life, drips water from the faucet, clicking heels walking purposefully down the hall, frantic calls to the nurses station, and the occasional sigh from my mother, who is laying in the hospital bed next to me, become my symphony.
Light filters through the magnolias outside. It is filtered again through the dusty, plastic blinds to make odd geometric shapes and various shades on the bland white and chrome room. I watch the time pass by marking the moving shapes in my mind as the sun repositions itself. The only distraction in this otherwise blank room is an abstract painting of a beach, which is in all of the rooms. I know this because I have been in and out of these rooms in the same hospital since my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in February. The reds, greens, blues and oranges of the abstract beach scene seem to mock my current position curled up next to my sleeping mother in my Venus Fly Trap of a chair. The rolling waves of the painted ocean mimic the valleys and crests of the heart monitor. I have memorized every contour of the faded print, over countless hours spent in these identical rooms. These rooms have become like a jail cell over the past few months.
I have spent these last few months getting to know my mother even better than ever before. Having known this woman for all of my eighteen years, it is hard to imagine her having a life before me. It’s not only hard to imagine her life without me but absolutely impossible to imagine me without her. I am a part of her and cannot separate our lives. I look at her and see not only my sisters, but also my niece and myself. In her cheeks, chin, nose and especially in her eyes, I see the rest of my family.
I feel as if I could trace the lines on her face and tell you the story behind each one. Most probably come from her children, as we were rushed to the ER with broken legs and stitches, but a few come from a first marriage and divorce. Then again, I see every joy on her face. I see the crinkle in her eyes when she smiles. When she laughs so hard that she cries, I watch the tear trickle down through these shallow valleys and I can smile at the memories reflected there.
Her voice, as she speaks words of wisdom to me, has only the slightest hint of a southern accent. She was born in the south and spent a lot of her life here but spent many of her formative years over seas with her military father and mother. She is transformed by the people her parents are and always have been and she, in turn, transforms me. I am all the better for it.
After I walk into her hospital room, I lean over my mother to assure she is asleep. I pull up her blanket to shield her from the near freezing room, which is contrasting the sweltering weather outside. I walk into the hallway and become part of another patient, doctor, family or friend’s symphony. I am part of the soundtrack to some of life’s most transformative moments. I run the tips of my fingertips along the rough wallpaper of the never-ending hallway that finally comes to a point where I can look down it no more as it bends in the distance. I walk to what has become my safe haven in the past months.
The continuing mazes of hallways lead me to the window I was looking for. I quickly step up to look into a small, crowded room. I press my hand against the warm glass window to wave to eleven miniscule, pink newborns. Mostly they sleep, peaceful with shallow breaths, but a few smile, or at least seem to take notice of my increasingly ridiculous facial expressions. One lone baby boy is crying in the corner and begins to turn red with the effort. I want to call to the nurses. Want them to take notice as this boy becomes more worked up. The nurses are clearly used to this, but I am not. I don’t know him, his mother or his family but I begin to panic in fear he will not be taken care of. Finally a nurse takes notice of the boy. Before she can take note of me I turn away to calm down after the sudden surge of unexpected and clearly unwarranted emotion for this unknown child.
While I’m here in this place, this hospital, my nerves stand on end. I’m constantly on edge and can’t seem to stay at a calm level. There is always so much happening, so much to experience. Most of those aren’t the sorts of experiences I want to have. This is why my safe place is with the newborns, because I do hope that in the future I will be blessed with a newborn of my own. That is an experience I hope to have.
The people I pass in the hallways are part of my history. They are part of my memory. I become ever more aware with each visit back here that I am also part of their story. They know nothing about me and I know nothing about them, and yet we affect each other daily. They may not know why I am there any better than I know why they are here but they see and talk to me in the hallways. We give each other encouraging smiles when we pass each other in the hallways or at the vending machine. That small smile they give me can brighten my day, and here I am, months after the fact remembering how that small sign of encouragement and togetherness made me feel better that day.
I walk back to my mother’s carbon copy room to check on her. Her face lights up and I am determined not to leave her side until she falls asleep again. This grows increasingly difficult as I only become more antsy in this small room, with very little to do. She recognizes my discomfort, though I try to disguise it, and she encourages me to leave for a while. I won’t be swayed, and plop myself down with a half-hearted smile. She is visibly relieved that I stayed and lays her head back down on her pillow, with a small contented sigh and a smile that is much more real than my own.
How she manages to seem so relaxed in this place, I have no idea. I sit to watch her and marvel. We are on surgery number three and it seems as if with each one I become more restless and unsettled. She only becomes more peaceful. While I should be comforting her, she comforts me. I’m not totally fooled though. She is unable to leave the fact that she is my mother. She needs to comfort me to give her comfort. I know she will be struggling once again when we all leave the hospital. Her whole family will not be surrounding her at all times anymore. Whereas the hospital has a somewhat dark sense of togetherness, home seems like a place where everything should always be normal and ok. Being at home alone is becoming harder to stomach when everything is really not ok. At least when you are in the hospital you have people visiting and always encouraging you. When real life hits at home, there is a not so much a smaller support system but a support system with less personal understanding of what you are actually feeling.
Doctors and nurses come in and out and somehow manage to concentrate only on the patient in the room. I know they have just come from other patients, other losses, and other successes but they manage to put on a smile and serve you. They are the same faces that have called time of death earlier in the day, have told families there was no hope, and announced that a miracle has happened in the operating room. These doctors have families and lives. I know most of them and their families personally and they know me by name. Some of them had been close personal friends before this and others will be from now on.
My father walks in with food for all and also to switch shifts with me for the night. He has left work early, which for him is a very huge sacrifice, and I am grateful. I rub my temples while he settles in. We three have dinner together and I make my way back out the way I came in hours earlier.
We are all here, in this place, this hospital, brought together by life changing events; births, deaths, and obligations bind us here. I may drive my mom home tomorrow, but what we have gone through and done here won’t ever leave us. This won’t leave our memories, or their records. I am bound to the children I prayed over, and though they will never know me, our lives are interlaced. I am bound to these rooms, doctors, nurses, sounds, smells and more than anything, this place, this hospital.
